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BEIJING: Authorities in the Chinese city where COVID-19 emerged launched an ambitious campaign on Wednesday (May 13) to evaluate all of its 11 million residents, after a group of new cases raised fears of a second wave of infections
At least two of the city’s main districts have delivered door-to-door campaign notices and sent online questionnaires through community workers looking for information on the tests people have conducted and whether they belong to what They are considered high-risk groups, residents said. .
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“To make better use of nucleic acid testing as a monitoring tool and in accordance with state cabinet requirements to expand testing, we have decided, after considering it, to test for all residents,” according to a questionnaire sent to Wuchang residents of the city. district, which has a population of approximately 1.2 million.
Wuhan was placed under lockdown on January 23 and only woke up on April 8. He reported six new cases over the weekend, the first infections since the curbs were removed.
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The planned tests come after Wuhan reported the first group of new COVID-19 infections since the city reopened after a 76-day blockade on April 8, 2020. (Photo: AFP / Hector RETAMAL)
Reuters, citing an internal document to district officials, reported Monday that the city planned to run the city-wide nucleic acid testing campaign for 10 days.
Residents of two city districts, Wuchang and Hankou, the latter with a population of more than 2.6 million, said they had been told on Wednesday to provide personal details, including any history of nucleic acid testing and whether they belonged to any of the 12 “key groups,” according to four residents and copies of questionnaires seen by Reuters.
The tests would include both nucleic acid and serum antibody tests, according to a notice issued by the Wuchang District.
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The 12 “key groups” include confirmed and asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 and its close contacts, people with fever, schoolchildren, doctors, transportation, banks, supermarkets, and government workers, and people returning from abroad or planning to leave Wuhan for job.
Asymptomatic cases, or people who have tested positive but do not show clinical symptoms such as fever, are able to transmit the virus to others. China does not release estimates of the number of such cases.
The Wuchang district said in its notice that its goal was to screen all residents, but emphasized that the tests for those in the 12 categories “must be 100 percent.”
FILE PHOTO: People in facial masks are seen in a main shopping area after the closure in Wuhan was lifted on April 14, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS / Aly Song)
Wuhan is divided into 13 districts and covers an area of approximately 8,500 square kilometers, almost as large as the New York metropolitan area.
The Wuhan government said on April 23 that the city had 53 laboratories to process the tests and 211 locations where nucleic acid tests can be performed.
It was unclear when the tests would be done in Wuchang, but some Hankou residents said the tests had started there.
The Wuhan government’s public relations office was not immediately available for comment on the campaign.
An official with the city’s government “Mayor’s Hotline” confirmed the city’s plan to screen all residents, but told Reuters the city’s health authority has received no notice about the official start of tests.
FILE PHOTO: The Chinese national flag flies at half-mast behind a statue of the late Chinese President Mao Zedong in Wuhan, Hubei province, as China celebrates a national mourning for those killed by coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Qingming. Grave Sweeping Festival, April 4, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS / Aly Song)
For now, different districts of the city could conduct tests at their own pace, the official said.
Since the Wuhan blockade was lifted, the city has conducted an average of 47,000 tests per day and more than 1.5 million tests in total, according to Reuters calculations based on daily reports from the city health authority.
Of the total of nearly 83,000 confirmed infections in China, Wuhan accounted for 50,339 of them. The count does not include asymptomatic cases.
More than 3,800 people in Wuhan have died from the virus, authorities say, or about 80 percent of China’s deaths.
It is unclear if Wuhan residents will have to pay for their test or if the local government will cover the cost.
Hubei provincial authorities have gradually reduced the costs of the tests and have recently limited the prices of nucleic acid and IgM / IgG antibody tests to 180 yuan (US $ 25) and 50 yuan (US $ 7), respectively. according to the Changjiang newspaper.
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